NORWEGIAN LOBSTER-FISHERY AND ITS HISTORY. 225 



near Land's-end and the Scilly Islands. Near the Channel Islands, 

 it is common, as well as near several groups of islands on the French 

 coast. In the Mediterranean, it is not so common, although it is not 

 entirely wanting; but its substitute as an article of food is another 

 large species of crawfish, the Langusta (Palinurus). It is therefore not 

 spread over a very large extent of sea ; but it is found in its central lo- 

 cations iu very large numbers, and there becomes an important article 

 of food and trade. 



Its general size is 8 to 10 inches from the point of the spine on the 

 forehead to the tip end of the tail.* It rarely exceeds this size where 

 large fisheries are carried on ; but now and then specimens of a much 

 greater size are found in places from which none are exported, and 

 where it consequently has time to grow before it is caught. Thus, 

 Pontoppidan, in his " Norges naturlige Historie," part ii, p. 279, says 

 that the very large lobsters are called "Storjer," and that near Utvaer, 

 on the Bay of Evien, a lobster had been seen which was so large and 

 ugly that nobody dared to attack it, and that it measured a full fathom 

 between the claws. This seems certainly to be somewhat exaggerated ; 

 but I myself have seen the claw of one which must have been about 18 

 inches long. Sir John Graham Dalyell says, in his work " The Powers of 

 the Creator," 1827, that he had seen a joint of the left claw of a lobster 

 that measured 9 inches in length. According to this, the whole claw 

 must have measured 18 to 24 inches, and the whole animal 3 to 4 feet. 

 As a general rule, those that are takeu in the fiords are larger than those 

 which are caught near the islands toward the sea. The color of the 

 animal when alive is generally a blackish green, with several blue spots; 

 but it may also be lighter, especially near the mouths of fiords, while 

 farther out toward the sea it becomes much darker. I may mention as 

 a curiosity that during this year (1868) I found a lobster near Hauge- 

 suud, one half of which was of a greenish black and the other of a light 

 orange color, there being a sharp and clearly-defined dividing line, 

 which ran lengthwise, and divided the lobster in two halves of equal 

 size. 



The lobster lives close to the coast, where there is a rocky bottom, 

 among the large alga? ; but in winter, when the water grows cooler, it 

 descends as far down as 1G to 20 fathoms, while in spring, when the 

 temperature of the sea rises, it stays at a depth of from 1 to 4 fathoms. 

 It is altogether a coast-animal, which very rarely seems to go any dis- 

 tance from its birth-place, if it can readily find there a sufficient supply 

 of food. Sometimes, however, they have been seen in large masses 

 swimming toward the land from the sea, and they have then been 

 caught in nets, having been mistaken for a school of herrings ; but this 

 is only a consequence of local migrations, when it goes from the deeper 

 into the shallower waters. It is not able to make its way through the 



* In the Kattegat, on the eastern coast of Jutland, it reaches a larger size than on 

 the western coast, generally 10 inches. — Ed. 

 15 F 



